Should Marketing and IT Departments Work Together?

When was the last time you and your IT department willingly collaborated on a project? The truth is, probably never.

The reality is in today’s environment, the customer is taking control of the engagement, and marketing’s challenge is how to get to the customer faster and more efficiently (customer-centric). Customers are turning away from companies who can’t provide the experience, channel of engagement and immediate service they need.

The CMO Council recently did a study sponsored by Accenture called Driving Revenue Through Customer Relevance, that outlines ways CMOs and CIOs can achieve Agile Intelligent Marketing together.

Now marketers may not be known to be the sharpest pencil in the box, but we do have a good sense of what the customer’s needs are (and all needs are not the same), while IT is usually all B/W.

According to the report,”CMOs must take a greater ownership of the customer experience and assume a leadership role in embracing digital marketing practices, data-driven strategies and new marketing process integration platforms across their organizations.” Technology now underpins and shapes the entire customer experience. IT departments need to take strides to be a stategic enabler rather than an operational cog.

The reality is working with or without IT, marketers are doing tactical things with e-mails,website analytics, lead generation, etc. with the ever-increasing pressure of ROI on marketing dollars no matter where they are spent. Beyond the spend, you need to look at what’s really the end game? It’s to get a new customer or make an existing one happy.

The moral of the story is for Marketing and IT to play nice. Remember, your pay checks come from the same account and together you can make a better impact for the company.

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